Worst Cartoons Ever Made: 17 Shows I Can’t Defend

The worst cartoons ever made are the ones I still cannot unsee. I have sat through Kamp Koral, The Problem Solverz, Mega Babies, The Nutshack, and Allen Gregory so you do not have to.

Some of these are just lazy.

Some are stupid cartoons that had no reason to exist. And a few are so dumb and cringe that they almost loop back around to fascinating. Almost.

Animation has come a long way since the first cartoon ever made, and most of the medium is a gift.

But for every classic, there is a show that makes you question who approved it. So here are the worst cartoons I have personally suffered through, with a reason for each one.

How I Ranked These Bad Cartoons

Let me be upfront. “Worst” is personal, and your list of bad cartoons will not match mine. But I am not just picking shows I dislike. I am looking at four things.

• Animation: does it look cheap, ugly, or physically hard to watch.
• Writing: lazy jokes, no story, or characters I actively want to avoid.
• The point: did this show need to exist, or is it a cash-grab reboot.
• Rewatch pain: how fast I reached for the remote.

Hit all four and you land on my list of the worst cartoons ever. Let’s get into it.

The Worst Cartoons Ever Made

These are the shows I point to when someone claims animation is easy. Some flopped in four episodes. Some limped on for years. All of them earned their spot.

The Powerpuff Girls Reboot

The 2016 reboot is my go-to example of how to fumble a beloved brand. I grew up on the original, so I wanted this to work. Instead I got flatter art, weaker writing, and jokes that felt written by a committee chasing a trend.

Fans were not quiet about it either. People still bring up the episode where the girls twerk, the quiet removal of Ms. Bellum with a flimsy excuse, and the fact that the original voice actresses were replaced without much explanation.

So it landed on plenty of lists of the worst Cartoon Network shows, and even the young target audience seemed unimpressed. If you want more misfires, my roundup of cancelled Cartoon Network shows is full of them.

Wild Grinders

Wild Grinders is one of the worst 2000s cartoons for me, and it is mostly the art. The character designs are some of the ugliest I have ever seen. Their faces barely move, and the kids stumble around the screen with all the grace of a QWOP run.

The animation is sloppy, so any time a character touches their world it looks wrong.

I have seen way better Flash work on YouTube for free. What people disliked most is that it felt like a vanity project, which tracks, since it was built around skateboarder Rob Dyrdek and his toy line. The voice cast sounds bored, and that matches how I felt watching it.

Da Boom Crew

Here is a sad one. Bruce W. Smith made the wonderful Proud Family, then followed it with Da Boom Crew, which crashed hard. It premiered on Kids’ WB! in 2004 and was gone almost immediately.

The premise is not bad on paper: three kids trapped in a video game universe. But the execution was flat and the humor was cringe, so viewers checked out fast.

The Adventures of Kid Danger

This 2018 spin-off is one of the worst Nickelodeon cartoons I can name. It took the live-action Henry Danger and drained all the fun out of it. Strange ideas, cheap animation, and humor that face-plants.

Most of the characters are just annoying, and the jokes lean hard on tired crotch gags. So it is no shock that it could not even last a full year.

ThunderCats Roar

The original ThunderCats means a lot to me, and I was even fine with the slick anime-style 2011 reboot. But this 2020 version is one of the worst cartoons I have ever put on. ThunderCats should be action first, humor second, with a real sense of style.

Roar flips that. The visuals are squashed and cartoony, the tone is all goofy jokes, and the whole thing feels aimed at nobody who liked the source.

Fans were furious the moment the trailer dropped, because it read like the Teen Titans Go treatment aimed at another childhood favorite.

Kamp Koral

SpongeBob SquarePants is one of the most adored cartoons ever, and its creator Steve Hillenburg reportedly had one rule: no spin-offs. So watching Kamp Koral exist at all feels wrong to a lot of longtime fans.

Still, the show itself is not the ugliest thing here, but the CG look strips out the handmade charm that made SpongeBob special. Older fans find it soulless, and it arrived right as many were already calling this the “worst” era of the franchise.

Mega Babies

Mega Babies is a Canadian series that ran from 1999 to 2000, produced by CinéGroupe and Landmark Entertainment Group. The concept is three super-powered babies, Meg, Derrick, and Buck, who fight bizarre villains with their nurse, Lazlo.

What people hated was the art.

This show is pure gross-out, with bulging eyeballs, exploding faces, and bodily fluids flying everywhere. Even as a kid I found the designs unsettling, and time has not made them any easier to look at. So it earns a permanent spot on any worst Canadian cartoons list.

The Nutshack

I strongly disliked this one, and I found it the way most people do, through reviewers like Mr. Enter or RebelTaxi. The Filipino-American series that aired on Myx TV has some of the crudest animation and most unlikable characters I have come across.

The voice acting is rough too. Phil sounds like an Elvis impression gone wrong, and Jack sounds eerie and mismatched. And then there is the theme song.

Supernoobs

After the letdown of Johnny Test, a poster child for bad cartoons, I was amazed people gave creator Scott Fellows another shot with 2015’s Supernoobs. At first glance it looks fine, with clean animation and distinct designs.

Then you keep watching. Between the unlikable characters, the cringe voice acting, and the random storylines, Supernoobs never found a reason for you to care. So it never built the loyal fanbase it needed.

High Guardian Spice

This is one of the worst animated shows I have sat through, and you can feel the missing passion in every frame. The animation looks watered-down and clumsy, and the voice acting feels forced and stiff.

Worse, the characters have dull designs that never grab you, and the theme song sounds like a cheap Barbie-movie knockoff.

What made it worse is the hype cycle: Crunchyroll teased it for two full years, so by the time it landed, the letdown was enormous.

Allen Gregory

I love a sharp adult cartoon, so I gave this 2011 FOX show a fair shot. A “not for kids under 14” warning popped up first, and I hoped for a South Park rival that was crude but clever.

Nope. The humor is mostly mean-spirited sneering, and the lead is unbearable. Allen is sold as a genius prodigy, but he plays as a smug, rude kid with zero empathy, and the recurring bit about him being in love with his elderly principal is more creepy than funny.

So it is no shock FOX cancelled it after seven episodes, making it one of the worst adult cartoons the network ever tried.

Fairview

Fairview came from Comedy Central with a weird hook: walking, talking nesting dolls living in a town full of socially and politically clueless people. The mayor is a former party girl, which sums up the tone.

The idea had potential, but the offbeat animation turned viewers off, and the topical humor aged in real time. A cleaner or more appealing art style might have kept people around longer. Instead it faded fast.

Fanboy and Chum-Chum

Fanboy and Chum-Chum is one of the worst Nickelodeon cartoons, full stop. It somehow ran two seasons on subpar animation and a mountain of criticism. The show leaned on gross toilet humor and stale jokes, so it never earned real fans.

So you can see the plan: ride the superhero pop-culture wave while comic movies were exploding. Chasing a trend is fine, but the creators forgot to add a single fresh idea, and the loud CG designs grated on everyone I knew.

Planet Sheen

Sheen was a fun side character in Jimmy Neutron, so Nickelodeon gave him a solo show. Still, a little Sheen goes a long way, and a whole series of him is a lot.

Fans of Jimmy Neutron questioned the point of Planet Sheen from day one, mostly because it ships Sheen off to space without Jimmy, the character people really tuned in for. The result disappointed nearly everyone who gave it a chance.

Santa Inc.

Santa Inc. keeps recycling the same worn-out jokes and tries to buy edginess with constant swearing. The stop-motion is meant to feel childlike, but it comes across clumsy and uninspired instead.

Then it piles on a preachy, predictable message and expects a laugh. Comparing this humor to an overflowing colostomy bag might be too generous.

Kudos to Seth Rogen and company, because this 2021 HBO Max special is one of the worst cartoons they could have made, and it may have out-flopped the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.

The Problem Solverz

I have endured a lot of rough cartoon shows, from Johnny Test to Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon. But The Problem Solverz takes the crown as the hardest to physically watch.

The premise is three guys who solve problems. Horace is a dull leader, Roba is a grating “brains” of the group, and Alfe adds noise instead of comedy.

Worse, the animation is a garish neon assault. The colors are so loud and the motion so jittery that it feels closer to a headache than a show.

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican

This might not be the absolute bottom, but The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican ranks as one of the worst cartoons ever made. People defend it by saying “it was made in 1950.” Well, Fantasia was a masterpiece in 1940, so that excuse does not fly.

The animation looks like smushed beetles, and the complete lack of sound effects makes every minute drag.

All the voice work was done by one person, so it does not sound like dialogue. It sounds like a man muttering to himself. The lip-sync is completely off, and you start to wonder if anyone tried at all.

Worst Cartoons at a Glance

Here is the quick, mobile-friendly version of my worst cartoons list, with the main reason each one is so disliked. So if you just want the short answer, start here.

The Most Hated Cartoon of Them All

So which is the most hated cartoon on this worst cartoons list? For pure visual pain, The Problem Solverz wins, because I could not physically sit through it. For historical infamy, Paddy the Pelican takes it, since it set the bar for the worst cartoons ever made back in 1950.

But that is just my take.

What is the worst cartoon you have ever suffered through?

Drop the show that scarred you in the comments, and tell me which one I was too kind to.